I have a 3 year old Havanese who does not come when he's

Customer Question

Hi - I have a 3 year old Havanese who does not come when he's called. Last night he ran across a busy street and had to be chased for 20 minutes before catching him. I'm struggling with this issue as he does not respond to treats as an incentive nor does he listen to a stern voice....help!

Hello and welcome. My name is ***** ***** I have been in the dog field for 25 years. I am a Therapy Dog & AKC Evaluator/trainer/ specializing in behavior. It will be my pleasure to help you today.Usually recall is the hardest and takes the longest to conquer with a dog. What happens is humans call the dog to them in a distracting place, such as the outside world, before ever getting a firm recall because usually the dog listens fine inside the home.Once a dog gets loose and the owner calls it to come to them without a firm recall in place, the dog learns that they can keep going because the owner has no control in bringing me back. As well a stern voice will also make a dog not want to come back to you.If you think about a kid who is in trouble and knows that Dad's tone of voice is showing how mad he is, the child is likely to avoid dad at all costs until absolutely necessary. The same is true of a dog. they read your tone of voice and your body language.What you will need to do is rebuild his recall and quite possibly use different wording for it. For instance if you use the command Milo Come now and he is not coming then you want to change it to "her Milo, in an upbeat tone of voice. We don't want Milo to associate old commands with old behavior.You are also going to have to invest in training several times a day in short sessions so Milo sees you as a consistent person who is fun to be with, thus in the end he will want to come to you.Some dogs are not dog treat motivated and when it comes to recall, we always up the ante of reward to human food such as chicken slivers or liver.Inside the home we teach recall with normal soft treats or cheerios, when we move outside we up the ante because you are no longer the most exciting thing in the dogs life, so you have to make yourself more appealing.WE always train on a 6 foot leash first to come to us, then as we progress we switch to a 30 food cotton training lead because this is lightweight and the dog forgets they are wearing it, thus they do not know if they do not listen to the recall , that we have a way of reeling them back to us.I am going to direct you to site for clicker training which is inexpensive and easy to follow. Make sure to start at the beginning and work several times a day in short 15 minutes sessions as your schedule allows. Withhold his meal for a bit so he is hungry when you train. If treats do not work then you can use any other item that motivates him such as a squeak toy.If you are satisfied with my service please rate before you leave. If you need more help just come back and ask:)Clicker training/positive method training/ print offhttp://www.clickerlessons.com/video’s to see how clicker training is done, scroll down to videos http://www.clickertrainusa.com/clicker-training-videos.htm